Beauty Demands

With claims that the recent rise in coronavirus cases in Leicester was partly due to 'sweatshop' working conditions in some textile factories, we revisit Maeve McKeown's post from 2017 on this issue:  Should we feel shame about participation in sweatshop labour?  Most people know that clothes are produced under appalling conditions and that garment workers are paid poverty wages.  And yet consumption continues at a fast rate. The liberal philosopher argues that individuals can act rationally and do what duty requires, that ‘our goodness (or badness) is entirely up to us’[1]. If we believe this story, it is easy to paint people who frequently purchase clothes as greedy and materialistic, leeching off the suffering of sweatshop workers. But feminist philosophers have long pointed out that people’s actions are constrained by oppressive social norms. Clothes are loaded with meaning and many people (especially women) are crippled with anxiety about what to wear.  Type ‘d

As lockdown eases in the UK, we are returning to the hairdresser and beauty salon in droves. In our visual and virtual culture, beauty matters. So desperate were we to cover our roots or change our styles that some hair salons opened at midnight on July 4 th ! Doing beauty again is a pleasure for many and provides a sense that we are getting our normal lives back. [1] Some of us rethought our beauty regimes in lockdown. Felt it didn’t matter, given the magnitude of the pandemic. Others felt less pressure – wearing less makeup, taking less time on hair-styling, and wearing pyjama bottoms all day. Take Lily Allen and Una Healy embracing their grey hair on Instagram . But, as we’ve discussed previously , the pressure to be perfect didn’t go away, and for some it intensified.  By the third week of March, video conferencing apps had been downloaded 62 million times . Video conferencing has transformed our work and social lives, and their effect on body image was almost instant. Looking at